Texas Tribune: After searching for growth, El Pasoans come back home

By Julian Aguilar / Texas Tribune

Posted:
08/23/2013 03:55:31 PM MDT

EL PASO - In 2009, Xochitl Rodriguez, a multitalented performer from a middle-class El Paso neighborhood, was Bhutan's first-ever invited artist in residence. After leaving South Asia, she served another residency in Kansas City.

But Rodriguez, 28, eventually did what many native El Pasoans do not: She came home, planted roots and is giving the West Texas desert a taste of what she went away to discover. She left for Austin right after high school. Now she is the director of the applied integrative program here at La Fe Preparatory, a small school just blocks from the Mexican border.

El Paso was once one of America's leading exporters of youth. In the 1990s, among cities El Paso's size, only Gary, Ind., lost more 19- to 30-year-olds to emigration, according to a study by former state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, a Democrat and fifth-generation El Pasoan.